Inside Virgin

Among the concert-goers, (some topeless and some who should be clothed), hired staff and hundreds of sponsored tents, I remain in the epicentre of it all — The Media Tent.

This ranks above any event I’ve been to using my mighty Media Hammer, and it sets the tone for future events. Here, reporters, photographers, bloggers and TV personal converge to report what is suppose to set the tone for this summer’s block of music fests.

The atmosphere, is just crazy. I gotta give the folks at Virgin credit for pulling off the first Calgary show ever, in such an organized manner. I really think they’re setting an example of how music fests should be run (if you have the money anyway). They say they’re trying their best in not leaving a big environmental footprint, and they make a compelling case when they’ve got companies promoting solar panels and bicycle-powered cellphone chargers.

I’m looking forward to the Flaming Lips.

iPhone home.

Yeah, I lied about a soon to come post about WWDC 08 but things got a little bit side-tracked. So instead. I’ll just give my reasons why I’m not super hyped about the 3G iPhone.

1) The phone is now $200 (including Canadian!). But Rogers 3G network only covers about 60% of the population so if you’re outside of that, you’re limited to the standard 2G network.

2) The GPS. Yeah, it’ll be great to utilize the maps to find out where you are, but what about how to get there? Apparently GPS makers TomTom had a turn-by-turn direction program running, but Apple put a stop to that with the mighty fine print in the SDK agreement. It’s stated that anyone using the SDK software cannot write any turn-by-turn applications.

3) SPEED! We have yet to see if Rogers will have any different data plans for the iPhone. Current 3G users with 1G data transfers pay about $65, acting on a Tier system as you move up the data latter. And if the iPhone is suppose to be an multimedia unit that can handle web videos (except Flash. See #4), RSS feeds and instant blogging, then users will have to pay a boat load to use it.

4) It still doesn’t load Flash files/websites. Apple and Adobe haven’t always seen eye to eye, and although Adobe has come right out and stated that they’ve designed a mobile version that the iPhone can handle, that hasn’t yet deterred Apple from staying bitter. Real bitter.

There are a bunch of other smaller things that people were expecting with the upgrade such as the lack of copy and paste, front-side camera for video chat, 32 GB model, plastic backside that’s really prone to scratches and so on.

I’ll still try to get my own. Maybe then my free mobileMe account could be put to use.

Apple

WWDC 2008 is underway. So excited. Will write up my thoughts later.

In the meantime… LOUD NOISES